Quote to Note: Hard Work Equals Winning Maybe Sometimes or Not
August 16, 2016
I am not much of a worker. I am fat, lazy, indifferent, and a good citizen of Harrod’s Creek, my home in rural Kentucky. That’s why I don’t understand articles like “Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Explains How She Worked 130 Hours a Week and Why It Matters.”
I noted this point:
Mayer [top Yahooligan and Xoogler] added that hard work is what separates startups that succeed and fail, and that she’s able to tell which ones are more likely to succeed — without even knowing what they do — by simply looking at their work ethics.
I recall reading “Here’s What Happened To All 53 of Marissa Mayer’s Yahoo Acquisitions.” If the information is this write up is correct, the Xoogler asserted success with these acquisitions. I noted:
The reasons for Yahoo’s decline are complex. But what’s clear is that the MaVeNS and acquisitions rescue strategy hasn’t been able to save the company from itself, despite Mayer’s protestations that it was successful.
So what’s the disconnect? Talking and believing are easy, even when one works without sleep. Delivering is a different kettle of fish.
My slothful self thinks that there is a gap between hard work, recognizing winners from start up land, and creating a successful company. If Ms. Mayer’s Yahoo were a success, would not Yahoo be more than a unit of the old America Online, which is owned by a former Baby Bell?
I am too lazy to think about that. I need a nap.
Stephen E Arnold, August 16, 2016
Watson Weakly: Everything about Watson Mostly
August 16, 2016
We know you want to know everything about Watson. Well, almost everything because you are, gentle reader, a “smart person.” You can get IBM’s collection of information you and other “smart people” definitely want to know. Navigate to this Cubic Zirconia gem of a content marketing “news” story: “IBM Watson: The Smart Person’s Guide.”
What does a “smart person” want to know? The write up answers that question for you. Here’s a run down of the article and its content about Watson:
- Four TechRepublic stories about the origins of Watson, a case study, machine learning for a “smart person”, and a peep into the future
- Five TechRepublic stories about case studies of Watson in action, a write up about what companies do with Watson, photos of products with Watson inside, a glossary of Watson speak, and an answer to the question “What Is Watson?”
- Five TechRepublic and ZDNet stories about IBM declaring a “new era,” the Watson Health medical image initiative, Watson in Cisco routers, an apology for slow revenue growth, and Watson in robot restaurants
- Six articles about the “affect” of Watson including how Watson detects early stage dementia, Watson and health analytics, Watson as a short cut to treating cancer, a partnership with the American Diabetes Association, how Watson delivers personalized customer experiences, and some objective information that says 63 percent of business will benefit from artificial intelligence, recently renamed by IBM to augmented intelligence
- The timeline for all things Watson; for example, seven articles about autonomous vehicles, Cisco again but this time with WebEx, eight universities on the Watson bandwagon, the “saving Macy’s” application of Watson, digital wellness [wait, shouldn’t that article have been in the health care group?], Watson delivering cloud based cyber security, and Watson helping a Spanish bank
- How to license Watson is easy with these articles: Six lessons from an early adopter [Isn’t that a how to?], the Watson ecosystem, the Watson developer cloud, Watson health [wait, doesn’t that belong in the health care dot point too?], Watson university programs [wait, wait, don’t tell me that belongs with the earlier reference to universities on the bandwagon].
All in all the write up is an amazing illustration of how much content marketing IBM is pumping through the TechRepublic channel. That’s good for TechRepublic. How good is this investment for IBM? Who knows.
What is clear is that some more logical clustering of Watson marketing collateral seems to be needed. A question: What if this categorization of items you as a smart person need to know was performed by Watson? Hmm. There are some rough edges. Perhaps the subject matter expert providing the “augmentation” did not focus on his or her job. If fully automated, how accurate is this Watson technology?
Sorry, smart person, I have no answers. That’s because I am not a smart person and I did not read this cornucopia of marketing collateral. You will, right?
Stephen E Arnold, August 16, 2016
IBM’s Champion Human Resources Department Announces “Permanent” Layoff Tactics
August 16, 2016
The article on Business Insider titled Leaked IBM Email Says Cutting “Redundant” Jobs Is a “Permanent and Ongoing” Part of Its Business Model explores the language and overall human resource strategy of IBM. Netherland IBM personnel learned in the email that layoffs are coming, but also that layoffs will be a regular aspect of how IBM “optimizes” their workforce. The article tells us,
“IBM isn’t new to layoffs, although these are the first to affect the Netherlands. IBM’s troubled business units, like its global technology services unit, are shrinking faster than its booming businesses, like its big data/analytics, machine learning (aka Watson), and digital advertising agency are growing…All told, IBM eliminated and gained jobs in about equal numbers last year, it said. It added about 70,000 jobs, CEO Rometty said, and cut about that number, too.”
IBM seems to be performing a balancing act that involves gaining personnel in areas like data analytics while shedding employees in other areas that are less successful, or “redundant.” This allows them to break even, although the employees that they fire might feel that Watson itself could have delivered the news more gracefully and with more tact than the IBM HR department did. At any rate, we assume that IBM’s senior management asked Watson what to do and that this permanent layoffs strategy was the informed answer provided by the supercomputer.
Chelsea Kerwin, August 16, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden /Dark Web meet up on August 23, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233019199/
Content Cannot Be Searched If It Is Not There
August 16, 2016
Google Europe is already dealing with a slew of “right to be forgotten” requests, but Twitter had its own recent fight with deletion related issue. TechCrunch shares the story about “Deleted Tweet Archive PostGhost Shut Down After Twitter Cease And Desist” order. PostGhost was a Web site that archived tweets from famous public figures. PostGhost gained its own fame for recording deleted tweets.
The idea behind PostGhost was to allow a transparent and accurate record. The Library of Congress already does something similar as it archives every Tweet. Twitter, however, did not like PostGhost and sent them a cease and desist threatening to remove their API access. Apparently,Google it is illegal to post deleted tweets, something that evolved from the European “right to be forgotten” laws.
So is PostGhost or Twitter wrong?
“There are two schools of thought when something like this happens. The first is that it’s Twitter’s prerogative to censor anything and all the things. It’s their sandbox and we just play in it. The second school of thought says that Twitter is free-riding on our time and attention and in exchange for that they should work with their readers and users in a sane way.”
Twitter is a platform for a small percentage of users, the famous and public figures, who instantly have access to millions of people when they voice their thoughts. When these figures put their thoughts on the Internet it has more meaning than the average tweet. Other Web sites do the same, but it looks like public figures are exempt from this rule. Why? I am guessing money is exchanging hands.
Whitney Grace, August 16, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden /Dark Web meet up on August 23, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233019199/
Yippy Revealed: An Interview with Michael Cizmar, Head of Yipy Enterprise Search Division
August 16, 2016
Administrative and organizational issues.
Yippy Revealed: An Interview with Michael Cizmar, Head of Enterprise Search Division
August 16, 2016
In an exclusive interview, Yippy’s head of enterprise search reveals that Yippy launched an enterprise search technology that Google Search Appliance users are converting to now that Google is sunsetting its GSA products.
Yippy also has its sights targeting the rest of the high-growth market for cloud-based enterprise search. Not familiar with Yippy, its IBM tie up, and its implementation of the Velocity search and clustering technology? Yippy’s Michael Cizmar gives some insight into this company’s search-and-retrieval vision.
Yippy ((OTC PINK:YIPI) is a publicly-trade company providing search, content processing, and engineering services. The company’s catchphrase is, “Welcome to your data.”
The core technology is the Velocity system, developed by Carnegie Mellon computer scientists. When IBM purchased Vivisimio, Yippy had already obtained rights to the Velocity technology prior to the IBM acquisition of Vivisimo. I learned from my interview with Mr. Cizmar that IBM is one of the largest shareholders in Yippy. Other facets of the deal included some IBM Watson technology.
This year (2016) Yippy purchased one of the most recognized firms supporting the now-discontinued Google Search Appliance. Yippy has been tallying important accounts and expanding its service array.
John Cizmar, Yippy’s senior manager for enterprise search
Beyond Search interviewed Michael Cizmar, the head of Yippy’s enterprise search division. Cizmar found MC+A and built a thriving business around the Google Search Appliance. Google stepped away from on premises hardware, and Yippy seized the opportunity to bolster its expanding business.
I spoke with Cizmar on August 15, 2016. The interview revealed a number of little known facts about a company which is gaining success in the enterprise information market.
Cizmar told me that when the Google Search Appliance was discontinued, he realized that the Yippy technology could fill the void and offer more effective enterprise findability. He said, “When Yippy and I began to talk about Google’s abandoning the GSA, I realized that by teaming up with Yippy, we could fill the void left by Google, and in fact, we could surpass Google’s capabilities.”
Cizmar described the advantages of the Yippy approach to enterprise search this way:
We have an enterprise-proven search core. The Vivisimo engineers leapfrogged the technology dating from the 1990s which forms much of Autonomy IDOL, Endeca, and even Google’s search. We have the connector libraries THAT WE ACQUIRED FROM MUSE GLOBAL. We have used the security experience gained via the Google Search Appliance deployments and integration projects to give Yippy what we call “field level security.” Users see only the part of content they are authorized to view. Also, we have methodologies and processes to allow quick, hassle-free deployments in commercial enterprises to permit public access, private access, and hybrid or mixed system access situations.
With the buzz about open source, I wanted to know where Yippy fit into the world of Lucene, Solr, and the other enterprise software solutions. Cizmar said:
I think the customers are looking for vendors who can meet their needs, particularly with security and smooth deployment. In a couple of years, most search vendors will be using an approach similar to ours. Right now, however, I think we have an advantage because we can perform the work directly….Open source search systems do not have Yippy-like content intake or content ingestion frameworks. Importing text or an Oracle table is easy. Acquiring large volumes of diverse content continues to be an issue for many search and content processing systems…. Most competitors are beginning to offer cloud solutions. We have cloud options for our services. A customer picks an approach, and we have the mechanism in place to deploy in a matter of a day or two.
Connecting to different types of content is a priority at Yippy. Even through the company has a wide array of import filters and content processing components, Cizmar revealed that Yippy is “enhanced the company’s connector framework.”
I remarked that most search vendors do not have a framework, relying instead on expensive components licensed from vendors such as Oracle and Salesforce. He smiled and said, “Yes, a framework, not a widget.”
Cizmar emphasized that the Yippy IBM Google connections were important to many of the company’s customers plus we have also acquired the Muse Global connectors and the ability to build connectors on the fly. He observed:
Nobody else has Watson Explorer powering the search, and nobody else has the Google Innovation Partner of the Year deploying the search. Everybody tries to do it. We are actually doing it.
Cizmar made an interesting side observation. He suggested that Internet search needed to be better. Is indexing the entire Internet in Yippy’s future? Cizmar smiled. He told me:
Yippy has a clear blueprint for becoming a leader in cloud computing technology.
For the full text of the interview with Yippy’s head of enterprise search, Michael Cizmar, navigate to the complete Search Wizards Speak interview. Information about Yippy is available at http://yippyinc.com/.
Stephen E Arnold, August 16, 2016
Palantir Technologies Fancies Silk
August 15, 2016
Palantir Technologies has developed a fondness for Silk. Silk is an interactive data visualization company. You can read about the announcement in “CIA-Backed Palantir Just Bought This Entire Startup Team.” If the write up is correct, Silk is an “acquihire” play, not a product play. I learned:
Employees of the graph and chart-making platform will directly join Palantir, leaving the Silk platform behind running on its own. Meanwhile, the Silk team will “work on even bigger and more important data problems”
A British newspaper described Silk as a “Tumblr for data.” Silk’s technology allowed a person viewing an interactive Silk-generated visualization to point and click to explore the data. A Silk user can flip between a map or a traditional bar chart, also with a click.
Several observations:
- Palantir wants to add to its secret sauce with some visual exploration spice. The wheel menu was hot years ago, but the shelf life of “wow” can be short
- Palantir has designs on the commercial sector, which makes sense. Even though Palantir has government work, the banks and pharma companies may have a quicker buy cycle to go with their desire for instant analysis
- Buying a company to get people is one way to deal with the shortage of certain types of technical and management talent.
Palantir competitors like IBM i2 Analyst’s Notebook have been, in my opinion, less agile in moving their systems toward the burgeoning millennial decision makers.
Stephen E Arnold, August 15, 2016
The Alphabet Google Thing: The Russia Glitch
August 15, 2016
I know that Alphabet Google is the darling of the Sillycon Valley set. I noted the allegedly accurate factoids in “Russia Fines Google $6.75 Million for Android Antitrust Violations.” No alleged I assume.
Alphabet Google, according to the write up:
…The country’s [Russia’s] Federation Anti-monopoly Service (FAS) said that Google forced mobile phone manufacturers to include Google search on the home screen of all Android devices and bundling other services with Google Play, while preventing manufacturers from pre-installing competing services. The case was opened in February 2014, when one of those rivals, Yandex, filed an official complaint against Google. Last year, the authorities decided that it had broken Russian competition law. The ruling was upheld again in March, when Google lost an appeal.
What’s interesting is that Google has a never-say-nyea attitude. I learned:
While Russia’s fine against Google is tiny, an order from the FAS demanding that the ad giant change the restrictions it places on device makers in the country could prove to be more damaging. Google is appealing against the order, with a hearing scheduled for August 16.
Does anyone care about Alphabet Google’s travails in Russia? One person. Margrethe Verstager, the EC’s competition commissioner. Just eight years ago, a Googler was supposed to hitch a ride on Russia’s Soyuz flight to the International Space Station. Since then, Russia seems to be taking a more critical look at the search advertising giant.
Stephen E Arnold, August 15, 2016
As a.I. Scientists Forge Ahead Teaching Robots to Hunt Prey, White House Discusses Regulations And “Understandings”
August 15, 2016
The article on Engadget titled Scientists Are Teaching Robots How to Hunt Down Prey marks advancements in artificial intelligence that may well feed into an A.I. arms race. The scientists working on this project at the University of Zurich see their work in a much less harmful way. The ability to search for and retrieve prey involves identifying and tracking a target. Some of the applications mentioned are futuristic shopping carts or luggage that can follow around its owner. Whether the scientists are experiencing severe tunnel vision or are actually just terrifically naïve is unknown. The article explains,
“The predator robot’s hardware is actually modeled directly after members of the animal kingdom, as the robot uses a special “silicon retina” that mimics the human eye. Delbruck is the inventor, created as part of the VISUALISE project. It allows robots to track with pixels that detect changes in illumination and transmit information in real time instead of a slower series of frames like a regular camera uses.”
Meanwhile, conversations about an A.I. arms race are also occurring, as illustrated by the article on ZDNet titled White House: We’re “Clear-Eyed” About Weaponizing A.I. Humans have a long history of short-sightedness when it comes to weapons technology, perhaps starting with the initial reasoning behind the invention of dynamite. The creator stated that he believed he had created a weapon so terrible that no one would ever dare use it. Obviously, that didn’t work out. But the White House Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough, claims that by establishing a “code of conduct and set of understandings” we can prevent a repetition of history. Commencing eyebrow raise.
Chelsea Kerwin, August 15, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden /Dark Web meet up on August 23, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233019199/
Snowden Makes Rare Comment on Putin’s Politics
August 15, 2016
I off hand heard a comment from someone living in Russia that President Vladimir Putin was returning the country to a time resembling the Soviet days. To my western ears, that does not sound good. Things are about to get worse for Russian citizens due to a new law the government signed into law. Yahoo Tech reports in the article that “Putin Signs Controversial Anti-Terror Measures Into Law” that these new laws are meant to be anti-terror laws, but are better referred to as “Big Brother” laws.
The new laws give the government greater surveillance powers of its citizens. This means that under the guise of providing extra security communications-based companies will be forced to store people’s calls, messages, photos, videos, and metadata for three years. The companies must also allow security services full access to all the data and any encryption tools necessary. It gets even worse:
“They also criminalise several offences, lower the age of criminal responsibility to 14 for some crimes and extend prison sentences for online crimes like abetting terrorism. The passage of the bills through Russia’s lower and upper houses of parliament sent shockwaves through the internet and telecoms industries.”
Communications-based companies are worried that the new laws will cut into their profit margins. It is predicted that the new infrastructure necessary to store the massive amount of data will cost four times the industry’s annual profit. It is recommended that a tax on the entire industry, then use that money to build the infrastructure would be a better option.
The US whistleblower Edward Snowden, currently in Russia for asylum, made a rare comment on Russia’s politics via Twitter about the new laws:
“ ‘Signing the #BigBrother law must be condemned,’ he said, adding that he would criticise the law despite fearing retaliation from Russian authorities.”
Snowden wrote what is already written on the wall when it comes to Russia: Putin is changing the country for the worse and it is scary to imagine where it will go next.
Whitney Grace, August 15, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden /Dark Web meet up on August 23, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233019199/
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